As you’ve probably noticed, the 2009 Trango Homemade Cam World Cup has come to an end. Competition in the Beauty Pageant portion of the competition was fierce, but in the end the Webcam pulled ahead to win with 31% of the votes and the set of Ballnutz will be going to Rschap. Congratulations! If you’d like to see the full results kindly follow this link to the Beauty Pageant thread.

As amusing as the Beauty Pageant was there is a lot more to gear than just good looks, so the main event involved testing the gear for strength, quality of construction and ease of use. The full breakdown of the scoring process is available here: Link

I’m sure you’re going to scroll to the end to see who the winner is before reading any further, I’ll save you the trouble and give the results right here:

Congratulations to Batguano and his Flexy Lady! I hope you like offwidths, because there’s most of a set of Trango Big Bro’s headed your way!

On a side note, anyone who's been following the silliness here in The Lab will probably notice a big difference in the force charts below in comparison to the ones I posted for earlier tests; the little dips and pauses in the loading have are pretty much gone and the loading profile is much more linear. The short explanation is that the hand pump turned out to have nowhere near the capacity needed for the new hydraulic cylinder so its been replaced with an electric pump. Its much noisier, which makes it harder to hear the parts breaking, but I think its worth it since it applies the load in a much more consistent manner than the old (leaky) hand pump and makes the chart of the forces much more meaningful. Plus I can go hide in relative safety while parts go flying rather than sitting there hoping for the best...

Name: Mank – Wishiwasamonkey Total Score: 64.20 Range: 29.7 – 46.5mm Weight: 232.5 grams Strength: 0 kN Failure Mode: Slipped out of the fixture Video: N/A Comments: There were a couple problems with Mank, the biggest of which being there was nothing I could do to get it to hold in the crack fixture. I spent half an hour playing with it and not once got it to hold even a gentle tug. The other issues centered around the tenancy of the lobes to over-rotate and jam when the trigger is pulled, which made placement and removal a bit interesting. With a bit of tweaking and swapping out the lobes for aluminum ones I think it would do well.

Scoring:

Before:

Mank wasn't able to grip the test fixture, so no chart of the forces or post-destruction photo.

Name: Top Secret Cam Prototype Version 2.1 – Jeremy11 Total Score: 97.48 Range: 44.2 – 78.8mm Weight: 379.9 grams Strength: 8.77 kN Failure Mode: Sling broke Video:LinkComments: The weak spot was clearly the webbing runner, seeing as the rest of the cam is still in perfect condition after the runner broke. Poking around a bit it looks like there is a sharp edge in the hole the runner was run through, so that would probably explain why it broke at such a low force. Placement and removal was fairly easy, but the runner tended to get in the way of the trigger. The extreme length of the cam may be problematic for some placements though, since it needs to be set in quite far for the larger, lower lobes to come in to play (e.g.- not good for a large, shallow placement). In fact it fit into the test fixture with only ¼” to spare... Oh, and if you look closely at the picture you’ll see that the stem got tweaked when the cam went flying out of the fixture after the sling broke.

Name: Green 2cam - Edavidso Total Score: 93.43 Range: 19.3 – 24.2mm Weight: 48.2 grams Strength: 6.01 kN Failure Mode: Axle supports on the cam lobes buckled Video:LinkComments: Very nicely made but had some issues with the stem buckling when the trigger was pulled, which made getting the cam fully retracted difficult. An overly narrow trigger bar didn't help things either. Anyway, it turns out that the interlocking cam lobe supports were a major weak point and caused the unit to fail at a surprisingly low force. Perhaps there's enough room in there to widen them, otherwise switching over to a stronger alloy might be necessary.

Name: Aluminum Lilbro – Bhickey & Friends Total Score: 50.85 Range: 97.4 – 134.3mm Weight: 215.5 grams Strength: 9.22 kN Failure Mode: Yielding of the aluminum tube where it contacted the fixture Video:LinkComments: Frankly I’m rather surprised by how low a force the Aluminum Lilbro failed at. From talking with Mal at Trango, regular Big Bros generally fail by way of the sling pulling through the aluminum of the tube rather than yielding of the end of the tube. I suspect the difference is in the materials used, with the Lilbro using a much weaker alloy than Trango does with its Big Bros. On another note you pretty much needed 3 hands and a prehensile tail to place the Aluminum Lilbro since the threaded portion was free to rotate, which means that you needed to hold it in position when tightening the collar to keep the bevel pointed the right way. Getting it to stay in the fixture was a bit of a problem as well since any bit of sling-induced rotation liked to pop it out. If it did stick removal generally required the use of a hammer. Oh, and the pause when pulling it (and corresponding dip in the force curve) came when I saw how much it was yielding and decided to pull it to failure at 75% expansion rather than try and get it to work in its deformed state at 50% expansion.

Name: Kenn’s Kam – Kennoyce Total Score: 87.37 Range: 47.4 – 78.9mm Weight: 189.9 grams Strength: 10.49 kN Failure Mode: Deformation of the axle Video:LinkComments: Kenn’s Kam was once of the more exciting entries to break, as the epoxy didn’t take well to being abused like that and sent pieces flying on several occasions. Unfortunately the nice, smooth action only lasted through the first proof test (5kN at 75% expansion) as the vinyl tube pulled out of the head and wouldn’t stay in no matter how firmly it was seated. So every time you pulled the trigger the stem would go 90 degrees to the head and the lobes would only retract a little. To do the other tests I simply collapsed the lobes by hand and pushed it into place.

Name: Webcam – Rschap Total Score: 82.98 Range: 211.5 – 303.6mm Weight: 1060.3 grams Strength: 7.42 kN Failure Mode: Axle sheared between two of the lobes Video:LinkComments: The webcam suffered from a few problems, the most notable being that the spring tension was insufficient to expand the lobes outward. One of the lobes also had its axle hole drilled a bit cockeyed, so it had a tenancy to miss the cam stop on the opposing lobe and invert. The big issue though was that the axle turned out to be rather weak and sheared surprisingly early. It was quite the sudden failure, with the cam being there one moment and on the floor the next. The slow motion of the video is quite amusing, so be sure to take a look.

Name: Steel Lilbro – Bhickey & Friends Total Score: 45.11 Range: 93.7 – 128.6mm Weight: 354.4 grams Strength: 10.80 kN Failure Mode: Sling broke Video:LinkComments: The Steel Lilbro suffered from many of the same issues as the Aluminum one, where you needed 3 hands to place it, a hammer to remove it and it liked to slip from the fixture at the slightest provocation. Actually, it was even more inclined to slip than the aluminum one and slid several inches down the test fixture before the sling broke.

Name: Flexy Lady (size green) – Batguano Total Score: 103.73 Range: 61.7 – 100.2mm Weight: 343.0 grams Strength: 15.66 kN Failure Mode: Stem pulled out of head Video:LinkComments: Of all of the entries, Flexy Lady probably suffered the least amount of damage from testing; the lobes are straight and the action is smooth. Had the swage not pulled off the stem it probably would have held considerably more force. It looks like there may be room to slip a runner through the head like on Kenn’s Kam, which would probably be much stronger.

Name: The Zibenator – Grover Total Score: 88.26 Range: 72.0 – 101.5mm Weight: 442.3 grams Strength: 13.57 kN Failure Mode: Deformation of the axle lead to the lobes buckling Video:LinkComments: It may be ugly and obscenely heavy, but you can’t help but love it. While it was crudely built with just a hacksaw and drill, it ended up being stronger than all but one of the other entries. Failure actually came slowly, with the lobes slipping and regrabbing as they became completely mangled.

Name: Nutter – Cosmicharlie Total Score: 36.40 Range: 34.4 – 41.0mm Weight: 124.7 grams Strength: 3.78 kN Failure Mode: Stem pulled out of head Video:LinkComments: The Nutter looked promising, but sadly suffered the same fate as the Flexy Lady; the swage fitting was simply not strong enough to hold the cable to the head. Had it held, I think it may have become a permanent part of my test fixture... It took several blows from a hammer on the small end of the head to get it to release.

So that's it! Feel free to discuss and let me know if you want photos of anything else. I'll be sending the remains back to the people who wanted them early next week.

And since so many people have asked, yes I'll give another try at breaking any of them, so long as its ok with their maker. So if its your entry post up here if you want me to give it another try and let me know how you want it done/what changes to make. Personally I'm curious how Flexy Lady would do with the head bored out enough to slip a dyneema runner in there.... {hint, hint.... }.

The Zibernator held on like a desperate leader pawing at a crimp who hasn't got the strength to close his fist any more. I'd swear that cam was actually afraid of coming out. I give it the spirit award.